When the head of Miramax complains about the glut of specialty films in the marketplace, it's time to sit up and take notice. Delivering the keynote address at Film London's second Production Finance Market yesterday, Daniel Battsek warned that despite the closure this year of studio divisions such as Warner Independent and Picturehouse and the independently owned THINKFilm, life hasn't got easier for those that remain and they face significant challenges during awards season.

This time of year is always crucial for the smaller purveyors of arthouse cinema, be they studio affiliates such as Disney's Miramax, independently owned studios like The Weinstein Company or smaller stand-alone operations like New Yorker Films or Regent Releasing. You might call them the mini-me majors, the mini-majors and the minis, but the point is that oversupply means that the more modestly budgeted awards contenders struggle to make themselves heard above the Oscar race clamour.

This year there is concern in some circles of a backlash from the US majors after last year's awards season was dominated by (relatively) lower cost productions such as No Country For Old Men, Juno, Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood and Atonement. There have been rumblings that Warner Bros is preparing a major campaign across all categories for The Dark Knight, while anticipation surrounds 20th Century Fox's upcoming release of the Nicole Kidman-Hugh Jackman epic Australia. Paramount has scheduled a December 26 launch for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Warner Bros holds international rights) and Universal has just premiered Frost/Nixon at the London film festival and also has Changeling waiting in the wings.

This bevy of big-hitters will pose a major challenge to the smaller releases, bearing in mind that even in an economic downturn the studios can muster sizeable marketing and distribution budgets and have teams of staffers and consultants at their disposal. The likes of Focus Features' Milk, Fox Searchlight's Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler, DreamWorks-Paramount Vantage's Revolutionary Road and Sony Pictures Classics' I've Loved You So Long, to name only a few, have their work cut out for them. But they will shout loudly this season: remember these films are all housed at capitalised studio specialty labels, all of which are well versed in the art of awards season campaigning. Miramax itself has four prestigious titles on the books, among them the much fancied Doubt and Happy-Go-Lucky – a strongslate by anyone's standards.

At the start of the year Battsek told me that to stand out from the crowd these days "the movies have to be of real quality from phenomenal film-makers". Backed by Disney, guided by Battsek's impeccable taste and experience and blessed with relationships with A-list producers such as Scott Rudin, Miramax will rarely be found wanting in this area and the same is probably true of all the specialty divisions.

However the reality is that some of the smaller releases are more equal than others and the truly independent distributors will continue to struggle; deserving movies often get left behind because their distributors lack the resources to compete. The differences are often exposed in the documentary category and you wonder how some of this year's contenders will cope. It may be too soon to say at this stage, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that Lionsgate's Religulous will be in the mix. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, backed by HBO, might well figure in the running. These companies will plough considerable amounts of cash into their campaigns, but what about a movie like Trouble the Water?

Carl Deal and Tia Lessin's story of survival in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina launched at Sundance and is an astonishing piece of work that demands to be seen by as many people as possible. Its distributor Zeitgeist Films is a tiny company in New York that simply won't be able to put as much money into a campaign as their more illustrious competitors. In this case it comes down to marketing savvy and knowing how to make a little go a long way. Fortunately Zeitgeist knows a thing or two about winning after its German drama Nowhere in Africa collected the foreign language Academy Award in 2003. In times of financial crisis and an oversaturated market, it will need to draw on that experience more than ever.